


a distant horizon, the moon on the crest

by friendly_ficus



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, alternate universe - wild west, but the cool parts of it. the fun parts.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21983716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: Tumbleweed rolling, a silhouetted rider, a town at the edge of the wastes.(Or: Trackerbees, the wild west, and more worldbuilding than anybody asked for.)
Relationships: Kristen Applebees/Tracker, also additional found family
Comments: 11
Kudos: 36





	1. divine intervention

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration for this chapter includes _Travel,_ by Edna St. Vincent Millay, _The World as It is,_ by Carolyn Miller, and of course the titular song of this fic, ‘In the Shadow of the Valley’ as performed by the Lost Weekend Western Swing Band.

It’s late in the evening when the argument that’s been brewing in the back of the saloon all night finally explodes into a brawl. As a bartender nearing the end of a long night, Tracker very much wants to stay behind the counter until the action dies down. As the proprietor of the Full Moon Saloon, however, it’s more important to avoid any more bullet holes being blasted into the wood paneling or chairs being broken over someone’s back. Chairs don’t exactly come cheap, and Tracker isn’t looking to place an order for them anytime soon.

She sets down the glass she’d been wiping with a decisive  _ clink  _ and heads for the fight, snagging the main instigators by their collars and hurling them out into the street. The tabaxi and the half-orc roll out into the dirt road, barely pausing before resuming their fight. A few more patrons take their drinks out to the porch of the saloon and watch.

“Just in case somebody needs help,” Porter tells her as he heads for a spot with a good view. 

Tracker rolls her eyes. “Right. Well, when it’s over you can take whoever’s worse off to, to—”

Porter gives her a long look, nodding his head across the street to where the doctor’s old office is shuttered and dark. Tracker sighs.

“Fine, damn it, bring ‘em back in here and I’ll patch them up.”

Tracker largely ignores the scene unfolding out in front of the saloon, rooting around under the bar for her kit of bandages and thread. She takes a moment to be glad that Fig’s off tonight, knowing that she’d either jump into the fight or start playing an accompaniment on the upright in the corner. Luckily, Fig’s off wrangling a family dinner out of her parents. Lucky for Fig, at least, since Tracker still has to be here setting out medical supplies and listening for gunshots. Gunshots would mean someone having to head down to Riz’s office to see if the sheriff was in, and at this hour Tracker’s much happier pretending that he’s gone home to sleep. 

The fight goes on, just the sound of two people beating each other punctuated by sympathetic hisses from the crowd, for a little while longer. Eventually Tracker picks up the sound of someone shuffling away, breathing hard. She hears Porter grumble something and the  _ oof  _ of him picking up a body.

“Come on,” she hears him murmur from sixty feet away, “Tracker’ll patch you up.”

“Last call for tonight, folks,” she says to the saloon at large. “Looks like I’ll be too busy to serve drinks.” 

People begin gradually filtering out, deciding that this is the last hand of hearts they’ll play tonight or that they’re getting pretty tired. Porter brings in the half-orc who ended up on the losing end of the fight and lays him down on the bar. The golden light from the lamps reflects in a glittering shine amid the bloody mess of the man’s eyebrow and Tracker sighs, snagging her tweezers as well. Looks like they’ll need a new glass but hey, at least it wasn’t a chair this time.

It’s quiet in the saloon with everyone gone, save for her and the unconscious man and the  _ clink, clink  _ of slivers of glass dropping from her tweezers into a cup. At one point she goes around to the other side of the bar again, standing between stools as she wipes blood off of his face and dabs cheap liquor on the cuts. She catches a glimpse of herself in the long mirror that runs across the wall above the bottles and she looks tired, older than she should be. And she feels tired, and old, and injuries aren’t going to go away, they’re a fact of life.

This problem is only increasing in scope, damn it. Tracker dreads the day that someone gets kicked by a horse or breaks a bone or, Lida forbid, gets  _ sick.  _ There are limits to sutures and sanitizing, limits to Tracker’s methodical prayers. She repeats the phrases again and again and it helps with things like this, little things, wounds taken during the night healing a little more quickly. If it were worse, or something more delicate, or something  _ silver—  _

They need a doctor. A town out here, stuck between Bastion City and the Red Wastes, needs a doctor to survive. If they don’t get one soon, well. Well. Tracker worries that they’ll all disappear, that the old dead elm tree in the town square will be the only thing left to mark their presence. Just that, and tumbleweed, and dust.

Basrar comes through the swinging doors to take over for the day, summoning up some ice in a rag and pressing it to the head of the unconscious man on the bar. 

“Sorry,” Tracker says, but he shakes his head.

“You have a good heart, Tracker. You are a good member of the community. You are doing all you can to help.” 

Damn, she hates it when he gets like this, hates it when anyone but Jawbone sees her tiredness, her vulnerability. The reassurance, though, as he gently shoos her out of the saloon to take her morning walk, is nice. She  _ is  _ doing all she can to help. It’s just, they need a doctor. They need someone who knows how to do more. 

As she steps outside Tracker looks back to the bar, to the thick pane of blue glass that divides the long mirror in two. Phases of the moon make a gentle arc through the stained glass. Tracker closes her eyes and thinks,  _ any help you’ve got could go a long way. _

Set in the dark of the pre-dawn sky, the waxing moon gleams. Tracker goes on her walk, heads back to one of the rooms above her saloon, and sleeps.

\---

Late in the night, right around the time Jane Cats is taking her claws to Gunter Smithson in the road at the northern stretch of town, Sheriff Riz Gugkak paces the floor of his office. One wall is covered in papers torn out of religious texts and notes that had been scribbled in the margins of medical books. Messy sketches of the burnt-out old church and Doctor Daybreak at the pulpit are nestled between criss-crossing strings and the pins Riz has stabbed into the wallpaper to make things stick. The walls of this office will never recover from his tenure here.

Notes like  **_murder weapon?_ ** and  **_arson?_ ** remain un-crossed out on the slate he has sitting beside his desk, next to the photograph of his mom and dad on their wedding day. He’s glad that they met and married in Bastion City, both because he exists and because there isn’t a dedicated photographer out here in town. The photograph is currently turned face-down. Dust is gathering on the back of it. He should dust it but he’s pacing, he’s thinking, he’s busy.

Daybreak’s murder isn’t the problem, regardless of the extensive web of theories Riz has developed around it. He’s interviewed fourteen people about it already and none of them had a shred of actionable information, nothing about who Daybreak had been talking to in the days leading up to his death, nothing about the thread of apocalyptic fervor that seems woven through Helionic texts. 

Daybreak’s murder isn’t the problem and the church burning down isn’t the mystery either—the murder weapon is hanging from Riz’s belt and he messed up one of his shoulders hauling the drum of kerosene to the church a couple months back.

The lie was not a difficult one to tell, but even now requires careful maintenance; there can’t be  _ no leads _ because Riz is a better investigator than that, but he can’t actually catch and arrest anybody because he’s the one that did it. He’s the one who followed Daybreak from his office to the church, silent, sticking to the shadows that were deeper than ever under the full moon. He’s the one who put his pistol to the back of the man’s head and pulled the damn trigger. The metal had been cold in his hand, the wolf had been whining, crying in that awful way that animals cry from where it was bound to the pulpit. 

It was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do, but Riz doesn’t know who Daybreak’s co-conspirators are, who smuggled him a sharp ceremonial knife, who suggested he kill one of Lida’s own with the moon high in the sky. And if he doesn’t know who else is involved, he can’t come forward with the charges against Daybreak, he  _ can’t  _ risk kicking that hornet’s nest and sending them running.

So,  **_murder weapon?_ ** So,  **_arson?_ ** So, Riz weaves together his suspicions late in the night and tells people that the answer will come, that he’ll bring whoever’s responsible for the murder to justice.

Two hours after sunrise, Old Man Aguefort sends Gilear over with a note. 

_ Sheriff Gukgak, _

_ It has come to the attention of the Mayoral Office that the investigation into the regretful death of Doctor Daybreak has hit a snag. Kindly come and see me at your earliest convenience, which should be immediately upon receiving this note or possibly before I send it. Governmental response to the tragic demise of a member of our community must be uniform. We must all be on the same page, Riz, even if the book has been thrown into the fireplace.  _

_ I do not await your reply, as ‘waiting’ is the exercise of a weak man with no control over time. _

_ Mayor Augefort _

Riz looks at Gilear. There are dark circles around his eyes, even though as far as Riz knows, elves don’t need to sleep. He considers asking why, but that will inevitably lead to Gilear telling him what led to his tiredness. It will be... very Gilear.

Instead, he says, “Hey, did Fig get you all together for dinner like she wanted?”

“Ah, yes. She came to my house and told me we were dining with her mother and Gorthalax that very evening. There was very little time to get ready.”

Riz nods. “She let you get your shoes on?”

“Thankfully yes.”

This seems like enough conversation with Gilear for, oh, the next week. Riz walks out of his office and into the civic building proper, past the cells and the room where they sort the mail and the room that serves as the in-town Solisian Army Outpost. There’s no one moving around in there, maybe because it’s early but probably because Fabi—because  _ Captain Seacaster  _ is busy keeping order at his  _ actual  _ outpost right on the edge of the Wastes. Good. Riz didn’t want to see him anyway.

As he approaches Aguefort’s office there is the sound of a dozen clocks ticking, growing louder the closer he gets to the open door. How the man gets any work done with all this noise is a complete unknown. Maybe he doesn’t. Riz knocks on the doorframe.

Arthur Aguefort spins around in his chair, morning sunlight glinting from his monocle and the dozen clocks that sit in various places around the office and the series of keys that hang on the wall behind him. 

“Ah, come in Sheriff, come in. Gilear, shut the door.” 

Gilear shuts the door. Riz moves a clock from the only other chair in the room and sits down. Aguefort looks at him directly. This is unusual; often, the mayor is busy with the innards of a clock or writing notes in a rare book of arcane theory, punctuated by the occasional mutter of criticism or bark of laughter. 

“You have never taken so long with a case before,” the mayor tells him, as if Riz doesn’t know that already. 

“Well, there are extenuating—”

“Extenuating circumstances, yes. The fire, for one. The lack of weapon, another. Riz,” Aguefort leans forward across the desk and Riz is abruptly reminded that he has been in power since before Riz was born, that it isn’t just because nobody else wants the job. “Riz, do you believe the investigation will yield any new information? Is there anything you do not yet know  _ about the murder?”  _

Riz has to shake his head. Aguefort leans back in his chair, turning slightly to face the window instead of the goblin in the chair in front of his desk.

“Sometimes we simply must, and it pains me to say this, consign the past to the past. Perhaps we will never know what happened that night.”

Riz looks out the window too and realizes suddenly that Aguefort has a view of the dead elm tree in the middle of town square, the path that leads west from the stretch of shops and businesses, and the side of the feed store, where crates and barrels are stacked haphazardly. Crates and barrels that create shadows that are ideal for hiding in. Shadows which Riz himself, some months ago, hid in as he followed Daybreak to the church. A tumbleweed rolls by. Riz’s palms are sweating.

“Ah, but that is only philosophy.” Riz’s gaze snaps back to Aguefort as the mayor continues to speak. “Our job is not philosophy. Our job is to see things that threaten this town, things that must be destroyed, and to destroy them. Do you understand me, Sheriff?”

Riz does not, in fact, completely understand. He can’t tell if the mayor is saying  _ I know what you did,  _ or  _ you did the right thing,  _ or  _ stop your investigation,  _ or  _ continue your investigation.  _ But he’s been Sheriff for two years and was a deputy for four years before that, back when they  _ had  _ a deputy, and asking Aguefort for clarification has never once led to a clarifying experience. 

“I understand.”

“Good. Well, goodbye,” he says, and turns his chair around entirely. Riz leaves the mayor’s office. He erases the questions from his slate. He puts the photograph upright again. He is moving on, he is going to move on, he is consigning the past to the past.

Just as soon as he figures out what Daybreak was trying to do.

\---

The shriek of the train whistle cuts the morning air of New Helio like a knife. The town is still waking, residents rising to attend sunrise service or sleepily open their shops. By noon, the streets will be bustling with well-to-do, god-fearing folk. The kind of people who smile at you and ask after your family and chat for a while, before shaking their heads as they ask why they haven’t seen you in the congregation lately. 

None of them are up and about yet, as the single horse pulls the single cart down the wide streets. On the wooden bench holding the reins, Bucky Applebees clicks his tongue softly to the horses. It is by all appearances a regular delivery of grain into town. 

In the cart, under two empty corn sacks, Kristen waits. In a third sack, held close to her side, there are two changes of clothes and four anatomy texts and the precious oilcloth pouch with her credentials, wrapped in a white coat. Between the sturdy cotton of her shirt and the careful rise and fall of her chest there’s a train ticket, stiff paper edges scratching against her skin. 

The train whistle shrieks again, much closer now. Bucky ties Righteous Faith’s lead to the hitching post by the station and looks around sharply. No one is watching, not yet. He gets down from the bench and goes around to the side, reaching up to support Kristen’s foot as she clambers down. She looks at him, seventeen and thin as a post, the splash of freckles across his nose so similar to her own. 

_ You’re brave,  _ she wants to tell him,  _ you’re brave, believe in yourself.  _ She wants to, she wants—she wants a hundred hours of conversations to fill in the gaps that grew when she left for schooling, wants the words to explain why she’s been so wildly, desperately unhappy since returning to the family farm, wants to say what it means to her that her brothers would help squirrel her away from her parents and the church and the whole damn town, she wants—

The whistle cries out once more, the sound of the wheels getting closer. The ground begins to shake, heralding the train.

Bucky grabs her shoulders and drags her into a fast hug, one fierce moment of connection. She doesn’t know when he got so tall. Then he’s turning to start hauling sacks of corn to the feed store and she’s stepping up onto the train platform, lumpy bundle of possessions in her arms. 

The train stops only briefly, the conductor scanning his eyes over her ticket before ushering her in the direction of the passenger car. It lurches back to life. Kristen digs her coat out of her things, shrugging into the white shoulders like it can make her into someone stronger.

She catches herself in the doorway as the cars shudder and move, half falling across the first available seat. In the bench that faces the one Kristen’s sprawled across, a woman in a dress so blue it’s nearly black appears to be reading a newspaper in peaceful solitude.

“Sorry for the noise, uh, ma’am. Is it alright if I sit here, at least for the first leg of the trip?”

Her seat-neighbor lowers the newspaper and Kristen is confronted with the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen. Silvery ribbons wind through the tight curls of her hair, artfully braided. Hammered disks of silver serve as her earrings, inlaid with polished white stones. A matching necklace of the same circles is splashed across her neck. The dawn sunlight from the window seems to caress the dark brown skin of her cheekbones, to reflect from the whites of her eyes. 

She smiles and Kristen thinks abruptly of the moon in the sky, before dismissing the notion. 

“Call me Elle,” the woman says, a little bit of a laugh in her voice. “Who might you be, doctor?”

“Kristen,” mortifyingly, her voice cracks in the middle of it like some kind of, some kind of,  _ ugh.  _ “Um. I mean, I’m Kristen Applebees, pleased to meet you.”

That seems to be enough for Elle, who smiles and returns to her newspaper. It’s from a city unfamiliar to Kristen, who has traveled through a great deal of northern Solace while learning her trade. And it’s not Bastion City, which is where she’s going.

For a few hours they ride in companionable silence, Elle turning pages of her paper and Kristen fiddling with her things or reviewing diagrams of the eye because, well, you never know when you’ll need a refresher on it. After noon, Elle sets the newsprint aside and begins to draw Kristen into conversation. It’s very easy to talk to her—it’s not like it’s a secret that Kristen’s heading all the way to Bastion City, the very end of the line, to set up a practice; but it isn’t something she’d been eager to share, either. There’s nothing to do but talk, though, and so they do, about the weather and the harvest for the past few years and medicine and eventually:

“Are you a woman of faith, Doctor?” Elle asks. “You got on back in New Helio, didn’t you? Are you out to spread the good word?”

“I haven’t been to church in quite a while, ma’am.” Kristen shifts, closing the book on where she’d been teaching Elle the bones in the hand. She looks away, back to the fields of corn that pass almost uninterrupted.

Elle leans forward, a teasing spark in her eyes. “That doesn’t answer my question, you know.”

Kristen flushes, caught out. This question doesn’t have an easy answer. “I... I’m not sure.” 

Elle smiles again, reaching out and setting her hand gently on Kristen’s clothed knee. There’s nothing wrong with the contact, Kristen decides, though it surprises her. Elle doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s only forward, like her questions are.

“You could test yourself, maybe,” Elle says, withdrawing her hand. Kristen’s knee is cold. “You could figure out the answer.”

“I’m not looking to join any religion right now, lady, so if you’ve got some scripture it wouldn’t be very welcome,” Kristen says more firmly, and the woman throws her head back and  _ laughs. _ Kristen laughs a little too, though she isn’t sure quite what the joke is. 

“I meant something more like taking a leap of faith. You said you were going to stay and practice in Bastion City—what if you kept going?” 

“Where, out into the Red Wastes? There’s nobody to treat out there.” 

“There’s a town before that, Kristen, that I know for a fact needs a doctor.” Elle seems sharper, more insistent with this than she’s been with anything else in their long conversation.

That’s all it really takes. Kristen is a doctor, Kristen wants to help people, Kristen is already wandering down the path of the world; she agrees to go. Elle has a horse waiting at the station, but she’s decided to ride back down the line. When Kristen asks her why, she doesn’t answer, just offers to deal a hand of cards. They play until the conductor is calling out  _ Bastion City! Bastion City!  _

“Elle...” Kristen stands, uncertain how to say goodbye. Elle shakes her head.

“I’ll see you again. Go on, now.”

When the sun at last hits the western horizon, Kristen’s in a saddle heading out for a town in the middle of nowhere. On the train, riding back down the track, a beam of sunlight strikes the silver wound in dark hair. Lida looks up, looks out—

In the time it takes for Helio to drag the sun back over the horizon, she vanishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kristen, literally talking to the moon goddess: i’m not trying to get religion right now thanks though.  
> what if instead of a john hughes movie, fantasy high was set in like, a western but without the stuff that sucks. like the west but the one from back to the future three (i'm sure there's something garbage in that but you know what i mean, the movie west). and they’re not teens. how many planks can you replace before it stops being fantasy high? more than you might think. that’s the general idea of this fic. i could ramble on about the actual ideas and themes i want to explore (go yell at me on tumblr at potatoesandsunshine about that if you want) but it’s pretty late and i just really want to post this first chapter to get it out of my drafts. so, tldr, trackerbees au where it’s the wild west (sort of) (the wild west but it’s mostly cool)  
> i hope this chapter was fun!!! i know it was a lot of setup but i’ve put a lot of time into developing this idea so sometimes we need a setup chapter. as you can see, some canon events (daybreak get rekt) have happened but it’s shaken out differently. there’s a plot here. plot elements. i am so very tired and behind on fh:live by like 3 weeks but here is this content  
> let me know what you think! i really treasure comments :)  
> next chapter: Doc Applebees arrives in town, Figeuroth Faeth wins a hand of cards, Captain Seacaster visits home.


	2. the morning, extended

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kristen faces interrogation, Fabian talks to the dead, Fig tugs on a heartstring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brennan during fh:live was like: changes the name of the moon goddess. me: yeah i’m not gonna change anything

The horse was waiting right where Elle said it would be, black with a white star on the forehead. Kristen rides west as the sun dips low, night coming softly over the world. The stars appear one by one and a tension in her shoulders lifts. Bastion City grows smaller and smaller as she rides, her plans of going to one of the established doctors and offering an extra hand also disappearing. There’s something exciting about this—the steady movement of the horse and the gentle breeze across the stretches of grass and the possibility of, of somewhere where people need her help—and she finds herself smiling. It’s almost a pull, a tugging at her hands on the reins and a whisper in her ears, the urge to keep going. To find somewhere to be someone. Above, the moon continues its slow circuit across the sky, more than the sliver that has been present the last few nights, growing into itself.

All through the night she rides, not in any hurry but unwilling to stop. The horse plods along contentedly. It’s a quiet night; she sees no one on the road, person or animal. A few times she passes fences or other markers of property boundaries, standing like sentinels in the fields. At times she finds herself almost dozing, the unbroken stretch of the horizon lulling her, but the horse will snort and she’ll jerk back into wakefulness just in time to adjust her belongings so they don’t fall. The usual unpleasant thoughts don’t creep in; there will be no one banging on her door before sunrise to try and order her to the church, no one to ask if she’s going to keep putting on ‘worldly airs’ when she refrains from joining in to the same old conversations, no one to make pointed comments about studying the scripture before opening her medical books. It gradually sinks in, as she passes under the curtain of stars, that New Helio is in the past now. 

It’s a few hours after dawn when she finally sees the town. There are several small houses spread out across the eastern edge that she is careful to ride quietly between, and a larger building that might be a school, going by the bell tower that juts up from the roof. No one seems to be around right now, either off working or still abed; she has a vague idea of trying to find a main building to start making enquiries at when she sees a figure steadily walking towards her. 

(Riz Gukgak, fresh off another night of very little sleep and a lot of circular thinking, looks out his window and sees an unfamiliar rider in a white coat making their way in the direction of his town. He does what he’s meant to do best: investigates.)

Kristen brings herself to a halt as the goblin approaches. He’s dressed mostly in black; black hat, black trousers, black duster across his shoulders. Said duster shifts slightly as he walks and she catches a glimpse of the silver star pinned to his shirt, revolver resting in a holster at his hip. A sheriff, then, or some type of lawman. He looks up at her wordlessly until she dismounts, rebalancing the sack that holds all of her worldly possessions and taking the reins of her horse in her left hand. The right, she extends.

“I’m Kristen Applebees, pleased to meet you.”  _ I hope. _

He accepts her handshake, meets her gaze with something sharp in his eyes. “Riz Gukgak. I’m the sheriff.” 

“Neat,” she says, casting around for something else to say as he continues to watch her closely. “Um, I heard you folks could use a doctor.”

“Who told you that?”

“A woman I met on the train? Is that important?” He gets a distant look on his face for a moment, clearly doing some kind of internal reflection. Kristen feels the first prickles of frustration start building.

“Look, do you need a doctor or not? I’m a bona fide practitioner and everything, and if people need help I don’t want to be held up out here all day.” 

The sheriff nods at that, somehow turning around while still giving the impression that he’s watching her. “Come on into town, then,” he says as he begins to walk, Kristen trailing in his wake, “the mayor can look at your credentials and decide if you can stay. That’s not in my job description.”

They walk in silence for a few minutes, him in the lead and her leading her horse. It’s awkward; he keeps observing her like she’s going to snap and start attacking him, casting glances over his shoulder that he either thinks she can’t see or doesn’t care about her seeing. As they continue it only builds, like an itch under Kristen’s skin.

“Pretty isolated out here,” she offers. “You must’ve had a doctor before this—no way everybody just goes all the way to Bastion City every time they get sick.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we had one, but old Doctor Daybreak died a few months back.”

Kristen stops walking, feels her face go pale.  _ Funny,  _ she thinks, or tries to think.  _ Funny how quick the past catches up with you.  _

The horse lets out a soft snort, gently bumping a nose into the back of her head. The sheriff gets out a few more sentences before realizing that she isn’t following anymore. He turns around fully to face her, suddenly more intent.

“Did, ah.” Her mouth is dry. “Did you say Daybreak? I knew a doctor by that name, years ago.”

The sheriff is only surprised for a moment, before launching into more questions. 

“When did you know him? How well? Where? Applebees, if you were writing to him in the last few months I need to see the letters, it’s important, did you  _ see him—” _

Kristen stops him, interrupts while shaking her head. “I haven’t seen him in years, I knew him when I was a kid back in New Helio. He’s the one who inspired me to study medicine. He called it ‘tangible evidence—”

“‘Tangible evidence of Helio’s grace,’ right?” He looks hungry, almost. Intense.

“Well, ‘tangible evidence of Helio’s favor,’ actually. The church doesn’t have much use for ‘grace’ where I come from. What happened to him?”

“Favor,” the sheriff mutters, turning the words over in his mind. 

“Sheriff? What happened to him,” Kristen repeats, thinking of a pulpit and a friendly hand on her shoulder, of the insistence that it was another pathway of service, in the way that everything could be bent to service of Helio. He’d been driven, Daybreak. He’d been righteous. She’d looked up to him and he’d been a mentor for a while.

He’d left New Helio in a blaze of fervor, promising to spread the fire of the sun into even the most unbelieving hearts. He’d left and Kristen had gone away to school and started wondering if that was a good philosophy for medicine at all, that it came to bless the deserving or convert the masses.

“He was killed,” the sheriff says bluntly, not even trying for sympathy. He looks a million miles away, fingers twitching slightly. “In the church, when it burned down a few months ago he was in it and somebody killed him.”

“Who?”

His eyes snap back to her, attentive. “I don’t know, the investigation is ongoing.”

“For  _ months?” _

“Yeah for months. I’m still trying to piece together what happened.” He shifts back and forth, suddenly indecisive. “Listen, go the rest of the way into town. We can figure out all the doctor stuff later—Aguefort will take forever looking it over. I need to go and make some notes. Go meet everybody or something, the saloon is up the street and a couple people will be there.” 

“The doctor stuff seems important—and he's already leaving.” Kristen frowns as he splits off from their path, moving quickly. “Sheriff! You wanna wait up?!”

“Can’t talk right now,” he yells back, “I’ll bring you a key or something! And call me Riz!”

With that, Kristen is left alone. She gets back on the horse, muttering about sheriffs who can’t be bothered to explain what kind of key or what’s so urgent that they have to leave immediately. And she rides the rest of the way into the main stretch of town, passing a large, skeletal tree and a shop indicating  _ Thistlespring Feed & Wagon Co. _ and a boarding house (somewhere to sleep tonight, already a win) and a general supply store. She pauses for a moment in front of what seems to be the husk of building, burnt-out and almost completely destroyed. Leaned up against what might’ve been a porch is a badly-damaged sign,  _ K X Ba k  _ the only discernible letters. Up the street a little more, she comes to the aforementioned saloon. Tying the horse (her horse? Elle’s?) to the hitching post, she slings her sack of belongings over one shoulder and pushes her way through the swinging doors.

Kristen takes in the saloon, well-lit by lamps as there are few windows in the large room. It’s all warm wood paneling and a few scattered tables with a few scattered patrons, conversing over a morning drink. In the back of the room there’s a tiefling woman sat backwards on the piano bench, table dragged over to play cards with another one, a man in a dusty leather coat that seems at odds with his slick hair. She takes a step forward and there’s an audible  _ creak,  _ floorboard squealing under her foot. Through the whole saloon, talking stops and heads turn to look at her. There’s a soft  _ clunk  _ as the bartender sets down a bottle and turns to look at her.

The woman behind the long bar smiles and Kristen feels her heart give a tremendous  _ ba-thump  _ as she takes in the short dark hair and warm brown eyes. She’s framed by a pane of blue glass that divides the dusty mirror that runs the length of the wall above the bar, the phases of the moon around her head like a halo. Kristen’s face feels very warm.

“Come on over,” the bartender says, and it’s like a cue for the rest of the patrons to return to their conversations. “I’ve never seen you in here before. I’m Tracker, professional shoulder to cry on; I also serve a good drink.”

Kristen settles on a barstool, still flushed. “I’m Kristen Applebees, ma’am. Uh, Miss Tracker I mean.”

Tracker laughs. “Nobody’s called me ‘Miss Tracker’ in years, maybe ever.” When Kristen opens her mouth to apologize she raises a hand and shakes her head. “I don’t mind it,  _ Miss Applebees. _ Now, what brings you to our little town?”

“Heard you might need a doctor out here and I’m, well, that. A doctor.”

Tracker leans forward, eyes going just a little wide. “A doctor? That’s great, that’s just what we need around here!”

For a moment Kristen basks in the rush of acceptance, and Tracker continues, “But I can’t call a doctor ‘miss.’ It’d be reductive, maybe.”

“You can call me whatever you want,” Kristen blurts, “just don’t call me late for dinner.”

Mercifully, Tracker laughs again as if that was a halfway-decent joke. “Doctor Applebees? No, not that and not Doctor Kristen either. Doc, I think. Doc Applebees.” She moves as she talks, pulling out two glasses and a deep green bottle. She pours a measure in both and slides one across the bar to Kristen.

Wordlessly, they clink glasses and sip at the unidentified spirit. It warms Kristen all the way down her throat.

“The Donovans, out in the western part of town, run a distillery. This is just one of my favorites, good for a toast,” Tracker tells her. “Now, why don’t you tell me a little more? Why are you out here, Doc? Looking for something? Somebody?”

“Not really, no. Well, not beyond somewhere to set up my practice.” Kristen looks into her glass, swirling the drink around before swallowing the last of it. Once she’s finished, she looks up and meets Tracker’s eyes. “I heard that people needed a doctor,” she says more firmly, “and that’s what I came out here to be.”

(Tracker, caught between an older suspicion of charlatans and a newer distrust of doctors, knows conviction when she hears it. At Doc Applebee’s answer, her heart gives a little  _ ba-thump  _ and a little of the worry she’s been carrying for the town fades.)

They pass a few more minutes in easy conversation, Tracker pointing out various patrons and offering a little more information about the usual goings-on, the approaching harvest and the practice maneuvers that the soldiers at the western outpost sometimes run. 

“And there’s one of them now,” she says as a half-elf in the uniform of the Solisian Army enters and reflexively steps over the squeaky floorboard. “The captain himself, Fabian Aramais Seacaster.”

\---

Fabian is moving before he fully wakes, an hour before dawn. There’s a rattling  _ hiss  _ and the sound of Hangman stomping his hooves in a fury; he’s rolling off the bedroll and driving his boot knife through the head of something scaly before his eyes are fully open. The hissing stops and in the dark, shaking sleep from his mind, he can see the long body of a snake. It isn’t twitching or hissing any longer, but shadows seem to cling to the thing, not quite moving only... only there in the space of a few seconds, gone when he looks again. Damn Wastes, muddling with things. At least this time it didn’t have an extra set of teeth.

The Fabian of five years ago would’ve yelped. Hell, the Fabian of two years ago would’ve yelped and scrambled up Hangman’s huge, bad-tempered side to get away from the ground and whatever crawling things might be lingering there. All tonight’s Fabian can manage is a frown as he cleans his knife.

“You should be used to things like this by now,” he tells Hangman. “I’ve seen you  _ eat snakes  _ before.”

His horse looks at him imperiously, as if to say  _ And who are you to judge me, Captain? _

Hangman’s right—well, Fabian’s imagination of Hangman is right. He’s not in a state to judge anyone. He’s also not in a state to go back to sleep.

He sighs, shakes the dust from the stiff coat that had been serving as his pillow. The metal buttons clack together, the sound harsh against Hangman’s breathing and the quiet night breeze. He shrugs it back on without bothering to do up the front, wanting the air against the part of his throat not covered by his dusty cotton shirt. He’ll fix up before he goes to see Mamma and Cathilda, but there isn’t much point to the presentation out here with just his horse for company.

Wearily, he mounts Hangman and they continue their journey east. By the time the sun has begun peeking over the horizon the town’s in sight. Fabian ties Hangman to the hitching post outside of the civic building and heads inside, mindful of the noise he’s making at such an early hour. It’s too early for Sam to be in and working, and from what he remembers Fig saying two weeks ago, she was planning to wrangle her parents together for dinner a few nights ago. Gilear’s probably still recovering from the excitement of an evening of cards and conversation, with that poor constitution of his. Mayor Aguefort’s presence is a fifty-fifty chance at any given time, but Fabian doesn’t have any actual obligation to check in with the man.

He makes his way to the room where Army business is meant to be conducted. There’s a very thin layer of dust over everything, a map of the area spread out on the central table undisturbed since Fabian was last here. His section of the Red Wastes, waiting past the amorphous border, past the dot that marks the town. It’s like a hungry thing, this vast tract of hostile land. He steps away from it, old frustration bubbling up in his chest.

He sets a stack of reports into the box that Sam had marked  _ Outgoing Mail  _ and looks at the empty tray where incoming correspondence should be. Hah, should be.  _ Fabian  _ should know better by now.

There’s never any new orders, never a new dispatch, never anything from the people higher up the ladder. Nothing ever comes for his unit beyond a few personal letters and a directive to ‘Continue Patrol As Ordered’ every six months like clockwork. It simmers in him, a low boil of resentment and bitterness and—

_ A few years,  _ he reminds himself,  _ a few years out here and I’ll. I’ll be someone.  _

__ The problem with a belief like that, that your superiors will recognize your efforts and send you somewhere that matters, somewhere you can do good and protect people, well. Well.

(Fabian has a faith in the hierarchy of the Solisian army that is eroding day by day. He used to be—he used to be sure. He thinks he used to be sure of it, back when he was young and newly-minted, his father freshly buried. But they didn’t put Bill Seacaster’s son out here away from politics and advancement on accident, he knows. He can’t make a name for himself on the margins, not really, but every time he thinks of leaving he remembers the look on Cathilda’s face when he left for training, and her letters the first years he was gone, and Ragh and the rest of his soldiers and Riz—well. Maybe not everyone would miss him. ) 

His head aches and he feels older than he thinks he should, rubbing at his eyes. The unit needs him in top shape to oversee their  _ waste of time posting on the edge of the Wastes where nothing happens.  _

_ You should sleep,  _ Ri—Sheriff Gukgak’s voice whispers in the back of his mind, like he would when they were kids coming in after a day of playing at investigations and sailing. He pushes the thought away.

Fabian walks softly past the closed door of the Sheriff’s office. Riz is inside, he knows it; Riz will never be a large man and he doesn’t have a loud step, but Fabian would know the rhythm of his pacing through a stampede. 

He takes a moment to imagine a world where he walks four more steps down the hallway and throws open the office door, makes a joke about how they’re both awake at stupid hours and drags the other man home with him, back to the guestroom with the wallpaper still peppered with pinholes from kids’ games and secrets and makes him go to bed. In that world, Riz looks up from his work and makes a comment about how messy his hair is, asks if he brought Hangman or a less-demonic horse this time, and they both laugh.

One of the footsteps sounds a little too close to the door. Fabian leaves.

He walks out of town, holding Hangman’s reins in his left hand and attempting to do up his coat buttons with just his right. It’s not like there’s a reason hurry; Mamma won’t be up for breakfast for at  _ least  _ another two hours and Cathilda’s unlikely to make much of a fuss at how he looks, but it’s the principle of the thing. 

A fifteen-minute walk from the main thoroughfare, such as it is these days, the house comes into sight. An extravagant three-stories tall, atop a rare hill, stands Seacaster Manor. Flowers bunch up around the base of the porch, kept growing through the seasons by some feat of Cathilda’s. Fabian doesn’t go directly to the front door, instead making his way around the back and tying Hangman up. 

Back behind the house, at the base of the hill, there’s a somber granite marker. Mamma had ordered it from some city or another, but it hadn’t arrived in time for the funeral. She’d been furious. At the base of the stone rest a bunch of some flower or another, blooms a dusky purple in the morning light.

“Hello, Papa,” Fabian says, and a familiar wave of grief and weariness washes over him. He means to start talking about the past few weeks, about Ragh’s attempt to cartwheel that led to a strained shoulder, about the reports he’s been sending about an increasing number of monsters showing up on the edge of the Wastes, but somehow he never starts talking. He just stands there, staring at his father’s name until his eyes are dry and aching.

Eventually, Cathilda comes down from the house. She lets her steps be loud, lets him hear her coming, but he doesn’t turn.

“Oh, Fabian,” she says quietly, coming to stop at his side, “how long’ve you been out here, then?”

“Good morning, Cathilda,” Fabian works very hard to keep his voice even. “Not long at all.”

“Of course.” She doesn’t believe him, he knows, but she’s kind about it.

And so he follows her to their well and carries water back up the hill to the house and she disappears into the kitchen with firm orders for him to sit  _ down  _ and rest a while. Instead, he takes pains to set his uniform to rights and runs his hands through his hair a few times before giving it up as a lost cause. When the clock in the dining room chimes ten, Cathilda calls for him to come and eat, and his mother appears at the top of the stairs.

“Fabian, dearest,” she says quietly, and stretches out her arms to him once she descends. He allows himself to be gathered in the embrace but makes a point to remain tall, back straight. Hallariel pulls back with a smile.

“My son, look at you. Look at him, Cathilda, doesn’t he look fine?”

“Oh, yes,” Cathilda says, nodding as she sets a cup of coffee at his mother’s place at the table. Hallariel sends her a grateful look and drinks the steaming coffee in one go.

“Did you rest well, Mamma?” Fabian fidgets a little, eats the corn muffin that Cathilda put in his hand with a pointed look.

“Yes of course,” Hallariel says, casting a look out the window. “It’s so very  _ peaceful  _ here.” Her voice twists on peaceful, almost mocking, but Fabian really doesn’t want to be drawn into the debate on the safety of his unit and his posting and the town as a whole this morning. 

He glances at the clock instead, noting the time to his mother and Cathilda and giving his apologies at leaving so early. His mother kisses his cheek and Cathilda walks him to Hangman, reminds him not to be a stranger.

“Will you stop in to see Tracker? She’ll be sad to miss you,” she chides him gently, somehow knowing it was his plan to ride immediately west and avoid seeing anyone else today. 

(Tracker’s very concerned by the proximity of the Army, though she never frames it that way. She just makes it a point to mention  _ warm relations  _ between the soldiers and the area’s residents—Fabian understands her concern. With the mining all gone and no railroad stop, Elmville’s connection to greater Solace is somewhat dependent on being the supplier for his unit. It helps that Fabian’s a local boy, that his people are good people who don’t interfere with day-to-day life if it can be avoided, but there have been moments of tension before. Aguefort’s never been a conciliatory kind of mayor and since Fabian’s falling-out with Sheriff Gukgak, he and Tracker have been fairly alone in fostering good feeling.)

And so Fabian finds himself riding Hangman back into town, tying him as far from the placid, unfamiliar horse as possible. Hangman isn’t liable to start a fight, but he’s... spirited, is what Cathilda calls him. A demon, his soldiers say, but that isn’t true. Probably.

(Look, a horse comes in from the Wastes when you’re a new captain and refuses any rider but you, you just go with it. This is normal behavior, Fabian will insist on that to anyone who asks. Nobody asks anymore.)

“The captain himself, Fabian Aramais Seacaster,” he hears Tracker announce as he ducks into the saloon. 

He grins, glad to be in the cool building, a little amused at being presented. The woman Tracker’s talking to straightens and turns to offer her hand. Her grip is firm and calloused in his.

“I’m Kristen Applebees, call me Kristen.”

“Captain Fabian Aramais Seacaster, a pleasure.”

Tracker clears her throat. Fabian doesn’t wince but his foot twitches, instinctively moving to avoid the stomp he knows she’d give if they were standing next to each other. Tracker’s never been shy when correcting his manners.

“Call me Fabian, of course,” he corrects, aiming to match the casual confidence in her voice. He thinks he manages it, if the approving glance Tracker sends him is any indication.  _ Honestly,  _ it’s like she thinks he’s bad with people.

He settles into an inoffensive conversation, mentions the weather lately and talks a little about the outpost, and finds Kristen to be good company. It turns out that they’d both been in some of the same places in northern Solace, her learning medicine and his training; not at the same time, of course, but it’s nice to reminisce a little about towns he hasn’t seen in several years. Tracker stays behind the bar but doesn’t chime in all that often, seeming content to watch over the conversation. She gets like this sometimes and he can never tell if it’s protective or proprietary, if she’s looking out for him because she cares or because he’s part of  _ her  _ town.

The sound of familiar footsteps behind him draws him out of the ease of the last few minutes, though, and he doesn’t turn even as Kristen looks over his shoulder in recognition.

“Hey, Riz, right?” 

There’s a rustle of cloth behind him which must be Riz nodding, along with the quiet clink of metal. “I got the keys to Daybreak’s old place,” the sheriff says, passing them around Fabian’s right side. Fabian, for his part, does not look down at the arm, does not take any initiative.

“Captain,” Riz says as stonily as he always does. 

“Sheriff,” Fabian says, still not looking at him. Like the formality doesn’t tear at every instinct in his body.

The tension stretches; Tracker wipes out a glass that Fabian’s pretty sure was already clean and the new doctor glances between the two men. The moment hangs in the air like a corpse and Fabian opens his mouth to say something, starts shifting to turn around, to, to gather his thoughts into something worth a damn.

A loud  _ ha!  _ from the side of the room interrupts the quiet, demands that the conversations around the saloon pause, catches the ear. There’s the clatter of a chair sliding back—Fabian’s hand goes to his gun before he can stop himself, but he doesn’t draw. He doesn’t have to look to know that Riz has done the same thing, to know that they’re both fixated on the overturned chair at the table by the piano, at the commotion unfolding.

_ “You’re a goddamn cheat, Faeth!”  _ Johnny yells and Fig’s triumphant smile twists into something sour. 

“What the fuck did you just call me, Spells? I didn’t quite hear,” Fig snarls. She stands too, rises from the bench at the piano to glare at the tiefling who had been playing cards with her a moment earlier. 

\---

The new doctor is interesting, Fabian is the mess he always is (a mess that Fig will kill for, if he ever needs her to), but Fig’s got Johnny at her table and he’s betting like he’s got something to prove. Considering how he just messed Sam Nightingale around, Fig’s got something to prove too. 

Cards are something special, a mechanism, a set of rules that give you a way to hurt somebody that’s okay. Revenge, temptation, justice, whatever she wants to call it—she’d found Sam with her hands shaking, pale with fury, and Fig just doesn’t know how to leave someone alone. 

Fig wants to call last night a mistake, an unusual moment of compassion, but the truth is that she’s never been able to walk away from someone when they’re low, the truth is that when she was a kid she cried over dead songbirds, the truth is that when someone’s been wronged it gets her instincts all turned around.

“Want me to kill him?” she’d asked in the moonlight. She’d asked it before Sam had even explained what was wrong, before she’d gone into finding Johnny with her key to city hall in his hand, something suspicious around his eyes.

“Yes, but you shouldn’t.” Sam’s always been concerned about what you should and shouldn’t do, or maybe it just seems like that to Fig, that this girl who works in what some might call the center of the town (and some  _ definitely  _ call a giant waste of space) is more worried about right and wrong and morals and such.

“No, but I  _ could.”  _ Fig had just meant to go on a walk, clear her head, maybe get in some trouble. Murder was not on the menu for the night, but something about the look on Sam’s face in the dim light had set something burning. 

“Why are you even helping me, Fig,” she’d sighed. “We’re not close.” 

“You seem like you need somebody.” Fig knows what it means to need somebody, what it means to be shuffled away, inconvenient. Sam Nightingale’s embarrassment, her suspicion, her anger... these are not things to be folded up and tucked away. 

So when Johnny Spells walked into the bar this morning, Fig had shuffled her cards with a toss of her head, defiant. 

Fig is Gorthalax’s daughter, she holds some sway over games like this—she  _ pushes,  _ subtle, more than half of it just performance, just the set of her hands and the way she moves her money around the table. 

_ Bet more, _ her hands say,  _ look at this girl, the old boss’s daughter, bet more. She’ll make mistakes. _

At the right moment, through the low conversations and general yellow light of the bar, she flexes a shoulder and leans back against the ivories, her elbow  _ just  _ glancing across a few keys. In her hand, the queen winks and reaches one of her hands to the corner of the card, turns her spade to a heart.

Johnny has four of a kind. Fig lays down a royal flush. He doesn’t take kindly to that at all.

_ “You’re a goddamn cheat, Faeth!”  _ he howls, and before that she’d been content to take his money. 

“What the fuck did you just call me, Spells?” she says, standing. “I didn’t quite hear.” 

The clock in the corner starts chiming noon. A wind blows into the saloon, unusually strong. Fig feels something crackling in her blood, something burning under her skin—

“You’ve been fixing to fight all morning,” Tracker calls sharply, suddenly involved from all the way across the bar. “I won’t have it wrecking my place.” 

“In the street then,” Fig challenges, not caring that she doesn’t know what Johnny’s all the way capable of. 

(Riz covers his ears when she starts talking.  _ You have to stop saying things that’ll get you in trouble,  _ he’s told her more than once,  _ because I’m the one who’s supposed to get you in trouble.  _ Somehow, it hasn’t stopped her yet.) 

“Unless you’re scared, Spells,” she sneers, and his hand twitches before he jerks his head around and goes for the door. Fig follows, thinking of a nice gal in the moonlight looking for revenge, thinking of winning, thinking of the right tangle of infernal words to throw across the street. She pays no mind to the people following her out.

The ground rumbles slightly. A hot wind carries the scent of brimstone through the street. Kristen’s horse shifts nervously and Hangman just stomps a foot. Riz frowns, puts out a hand to stop Kristen from leaving the porch.

“Don’t wanna get between them, I think,” he offers, eyes trained on the two warlocks in the road.

“Does this happen a lot?” she asks, incredulous.

“Not very often, no.” Kristen jumps a little, surprised to see Tracker leaning against the facade of the saloon. She looks troubled. “A fight isn’t uncommon, but not this,” she gestures her hand, meaning the energy gathering in the air, the magic. 

“The world could end out here and it’d be days before anyone noticed,” Fabian says with a shake of his head.

Johnny snarls something and Fig slides her foot back, braces herself.

In the saloon, the twelfth chime of the clock fades. Outside, the uncaring sun blazes down.

On a cue they both seem to hear, they start to _move._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it’s been so long, i was busy! i’m a slow writer! pick your favorite reason. (i know it maybe wasn’t clear but it’s been like a day since the events of chapter one? in ch 1 the riz section was the morning of the same day that kristen got on the train, now it’s the next day. lots of things this chapter were happening concurrently and i hope that made sense, come yell at me at potatoesandsunshine on tumblr if you want me to Get Into It more)  
> next time: Figueroth defies the sun, Tracker rejects nihilism, Kristen practices medicine.  
> let me know what you think! :) plot! is happening now!


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